Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday October 30, 2012 @07:10AM
from the quick-everybody-become-more-wasteful dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that Sweden's program of generating energy from garbage is wildly successful, but recently its success has also generated a surprising issue: There is simply not enough trash. Sweden has recently begun to import about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the rest of Europe per year to use in its power plants. Sweden already brings trash from Norway and hopes to get garbage from Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries. Sweden creates energy for around 250,000 homes and powers one-fifth of the district heating system. Its incineration plants offer a look into the future where countries could potentially make money off of their trash instead of dumping. Landfilling of organic materials – a highly inefficient and environmentally degrading system (PDF) — has been forbidden in Sweden since 2005 and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from landfills has fallen dramatically (PDF). 'I hope that we instead will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries,' says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the country's environmental protection agency. 'They don't have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste.'"

Bloody socialists. My garbage is mine to dispose of as I see fit -- after, all I created it through my own private endeavour! To see it wrested from my hands is frankly an assault on my liberty and a chilling curb on garbage creators like me everywhere. By golly, if they take too much of my garbage, I'll be forced to move overseas.

Garbage collection in Naples is handled by the municipality afak. Remember that trash issue a few years ago? If the mafia had been in charge of trash, all the trash would have disappeared. No one makes things disappear like the mafia.

In recent history some mafia groups went into the hazardous chemicals disposals business. They used to have a disturbingly high rate of "accidents" at sea in which they lost their cargo over the side of the boat. That's a much better example of how unregulated organisations deal with waste. Out at sea, every problem can be somebody else's problem!

Yes, but where will it stop? After they've taken control of Europe's natural trash resources, they'll turn to Russia, then it will only be a matter of time before they attack us on our own jersey shores.

Bloody socialists. My garbage is mine to dispose of as I see fit -- after, all I created it through my own private endeavour! To see it wrested from my hands is frankly an assault on my liberty and a chilling curb on garbage creators like me everywhere. By golly, if they take too much of my garbage, I'll be forced to move overseas.

That's just giving in to communism. They'll have to pry my garbage out of my cold dead hands.

But, how much energy does it take to move that amount of waste, from those countries, to Sweden, sort, process, and extract energy from them compared to, say, the useful energy out from the process that's heating those 250,000 homes (which doesn't seem an awful lot, and I live in the UK which is smaller but has more people in it)?

Surely the transport costs alone would mean it would be better to buy the diesel used to transport that amount of material, then burn that directly?

It can't be worse than coal because it doesn't take any energy to break it loose from the earth and crush it, and the labor at the small scale is "free" you don't have to pay people to put trash in a trash can (but at higher levels a truck of coal costs about as much to drive as a truck of garbage) Admittedly the energy content per Kg is probably a bit lower so its not going to be as much of a win over coal as you'd guess. But it certainly won't be worse.

The real killer energy cost / green issue is exhaust emissions scrubbing. Not selling electronic devices with lead based solder doesn't mean all durable goods made with lead solder instantly disappeared. Plenty of things in the trash that you wouldn't want to breathe after burning. You'd like to think special bins for plastic and electronics magically means the "food refuse" bin is pristine pure 100% lead and plastic and paint free, but its not, and the required scrubbing just in case is expensive.

I find it very interesting that Sweden is now doing this... Meanwhile in Portugal, this has been done for at least 20 years in thermoelectric powerplants and concrete factories (the so called co-incineration/co-generation).

The summary also mentions methane emissions have fallen. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and is emitted from landfills. Landfills often try to burn the methane (according to the wiki page on methane). But I'm guessing the process will be much more optimized if someone is making money off of it as opposed to someone being directed to burn it to prevent global warming or to explosions. The lowered emissions seem consistent with that.

Methane emissions have fallen - this implies there's a lot of organic matter in the trash. While incinerating it is faster, I wonder if composting it would be a better long term approach. There are many sources of energy, but organic matter is more valuable as fertilizer. Especially in that it will recover chemicals like phosphorus, of which there's a shortage brewing.

About the cost of transporting it - if a lot of the trash is organic, then they're essentially transporting water, something that becomes evi

India had a similar situation. With great pomp and ceremony, the Indian energy minister announced the "switching-on" of the first trash-burning power plant. He pressed the big red start button, and the furnaces start up. The generating power dial slowly rose and then stopped way below target to much applause. After he went away, they did an investigation and discovered... that anything burnable (car tyres, wood, boxes, packaging was already being recycled. What was left was just soggy wet compost.

Scrubbing is not really contingent on anything. Things like plastic, wood, paper and other organic waste also produce toxic gases and ash even when you burn them at high temperatures in nearly ideal conditions. For one thing everything that lives AFAIK contains considerable amounts of sulfur. Remember when your chemistry teacher had you burn sulfur to make sulfuric acid?

Well, maybe not coal because of the amount of CO2 coal emits, but you have to factor in the conversion efficiency - 25% for badly designed mass burn vs 56% for CCGT; the amount of water that has to be evaporated before the rubbish will burn; and the amount of energy/carbon that went into plastic production (if you're comparing against recycling or reuse). A recent ENDS report (respected UK environmental trade journal) reported that if the amount of biomass in waste is below 65%, you get less CO2 from just b

The problem is very complex. I am pretty sure the country with the rubbish (Italy, Romania, Bulgaria... ) would pay for the transport and then some.

It would be more effective for those country to build their own garbage burning power plants, but they often find strong opposition (NIMBY syndrome). Opposition usually says it is dangerous for helth due to the fumes, and it makes recicling and reducing garbage production counter productive (as partially shown by sweeden "problem"). So, in country like Italy dis

[...] So, in country like Italy disposing of garbage is a costly problem and it is not unlikely that the government would be happy to pay.

About the cost of moving oil, well if you import your oil from Saudi, then it is cheaper to import rubbish from Italy. If oil comes from Norway via pipes probably not, but oil i definetely more expansive than garbage

I beg to disagree. Garbage producing countries are paying to get rid of the thing, including transport costs. I do not see the Saudis paying the swedes to get rid of the oil which is staining the inside of the oil wells. In the end the Swedes are only selling a service: how to part morons from their money. Luckily, now there's an economic crisis, so we're starting incinerating plants over here in italy too. [trm.to.it] Pity is, they're owned and/or controlled by the municipalities, so none of those will use garbage from outside their administrative area: plants are built too small, etc.etc., so as a country the problem will remain.

About the cost of moving oil, well if you import your oil from Saudi, then it is cheaper to import rubbish from Italy. If oil comes from Norway via pipes probably not, but oil i definetely more expansive than garbage

Not necessarily. It would depend on the differences in energy density between oil and the trash. Granted, its a longer distance, but if the oil is the equivalent of 10 trash piles per costs to transport, the Saudi solution could still be cheaper.

Okay, so *someone* has to pay to put the fuel into that foreign country in the first place, then pay for the extra bit in the tank required to move it *and* the cargo to its destination.

Whatever way you look at it, you paid to move X amount of rubbish to your country and burn it, where you could have just moved Y amount of oil to your country and burned it instead without any intermediate losses and conversions and it wouldn't have cost any more.

You have to move that rubbish around anyway, even if you just throw it in landfill. At least by burning it you can recover much of the energy.

As usual whenever anyone points out a seemingly obvious flaw on Slashdot you can be sure that knowledgeable engineer has sat down and worked it out before convincing people to invest millions of Euros in it.

The reality is as follows: There were people trying to establish wast burning plants all over the nation. Some communities resisted. Then came the recycling revolution and you had so much capacity in your waste plants and so little waste fuel was left. So they decided to import waste to burn it. Still waste burning plants are a deficit business. The problem is theirs: massive overcapacity in waste plants.

Perhaps they are planning on avoiding the use of diesel? Most of the EU's main rail networks have been electrified for years, so if the Swedes are serious about making this environmentally efficient then I suspect they'd be looking at freighting the garbage in bulk on trains using that. As long as you can generate more power from a given train load of garbage that it takes to freight it then you are on to a winner - and that's before you consider the environmental and ecological impact of just dumping it all into landfill.

You could ship it by rail the whole way, but that seems like a waste of railway cars and space in the railway schedule that could be better used to transport valuable and/or time-critical freight or passengers on passenger trains. I think they actually use ships and ship the garbage to the harbor nearest to the power plant where they then load the garbage on trucks or railway cars depending on a bunch of factors like how far away the plant is and whether it has a rail connection.

The elecric energy that can be recovered from one tonne of waste (0.5 MWh) is approximately sufficient to transport one tonne of cargo the circumference of the Earth by rail or sea. The distances discussed here are significantly shorter than that.

(In addition, incineration generates about 2 MWh of heat per tonne, but that can only be used for applications like domestic heating, not for transport.)

It's been shown over and again that they were wrong on this one (Google it!)

Further, the entertainment value of P&T can often get overrun by their logical fallacies (ad hominem attacks all over, appeals to emotion) and frankly kooky choice of "experts", all being CATO institute hacks, seldom actual scientists.

The city of Amsterdam has a plant that imports garbage from other countries to create electricity also. Just to back up your point, Amsterdam is busy creating new canals for barge traffic to more efficiently feed the plant from abroad.

People will usually pay you to take their trash:)
No municipality wants a landfill in the neighbourhood, transport by sea is usually cheap.

How is this "green"?

Compared to dumping stuff on landfills this is very much green. Bad stuff doesn't leak into the ground water, and the emissions are filtered pretty good.
I trust the Swedes to do a good job at filtering the emissions.

No municipality wants a landfill in the neighborhood, transport by sea is usually cheap.

Hm, You just gave me an idea. I wonder who will first claim the right to mine plastic from Great $Ocean Garbage Patch? If I was a naval architect, I would project "Plastics Harvester Boats" today. And I would make sure they can use their catch for their own propulsion.

"Surely the transport costs alone would mean it would be better to buy the diesel used to transport that amount of material, then burn that directly?"

They 'import' it, nowhere does it say they 'pay' for it. The trash owner has to pay to get rid of it, the only thing is that companies who make electricity money from taking it can have a lower price than those who have to deal with it in other ways.I live in a small country in Europe and we have the same problem, because of our heavy recycling, 5 garbage bins

The "green" credentials are not as simple as the net energy produced. Generalising, we're running out of landfill sites in the EU. I daresay it can be an overall energy deficit and still be preferable.

Partly due to the lack of landfill, and partly for "green" reasons like methane and the nasty leachate run-off, the EU are mandating a per-ton penalty for waste dumped in landfill. The response has been effective in my city. More than half my usual domestic rubbish by volume (quite a bit more than half by weig

Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?

Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

We're some way off global, carbon-free energy production, as you point out. But that's not the problem this is solving.

Of course energy from garbage contributes greenhouse gases. But this is not displacing greenhouse-gas-free nuclear or wave power generation - it is reducing the dependency on high-running-cost, greenhouse-gas-producing oil / gas / coal power. So it increases sustainability to that extent. That is a good thing. And less landfill is also a good thing.

It's not about "shiny", so much as improving things where and when we can. But we need to increase reuse and recycling (in that order), and reduce waste caused by built-in obsolescence, excess packaging, and excessive consumption too.

Also I'd expect that due to the uniformity of the fuel, oil/gas/coal might burn cleaner with less pollution. With various organics I'd expect significant variation in the fuel, and a much more difficult to control process.

With various organics I'd expect significant variation in the fuel, and a much more difficult to control process.

That never stopped us before. Ever since microcomputers were invented, we actually like difficult to control processes. With more and harder technical problems standing between us and our goals, I predict more jobs for highly qualified workforce.

Personally, I'm just waiting for the singularity and the discovery of virtually free limitless fusion energy in ten or so years' time, then the machines can do all the work and humankind will bask in eternal glory and we'll never have to worry about anything else ever again.

couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?

I'm all for that. Although since the Swedes have a garbage shortage, maybe they're already doing that reasonably well.

As it is, they may be producing greenhouse gases, but at least they're producing them from waste that has to be disposed of anyway and not trucking in fossil fuels that require extraction, refining and transport in addition to the energy consumed in hauling waste.

Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?

Our pursuit of 'shiny' is killing us.

First of all Sweden seems to recycle as much as possible to the point they ran out of garbage and have to import it.

Second, this matter would decompose anyway releasing (as you noticed) methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. If in those countries all this garbage would end up on landfills, why not to burn it thus both reducing coal burning and reducing methane emissions?

Third, nothing is lost. Do you think that if Sweden wasn't burning Italian trash, Italians would start recycling?

The organic matter they burn was produced by farming, therefore the full cycle did not produce COâ. Unlinke burning oil, which releases all COâ fixed in ancient ancient forests during the last 500 million years.

When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?

That's a good point. What's sad is that we don't even do the things we can do for free, like mandating that packaging shall carry symbols for recycling. We've already made such mandates for electronic goods, and plastic parts now have symbols stamped on them so you can take apart e.g. a PC and recycle basically the whole thing, so long as the manufacturer used rivets made of the same basic material as the case and so on. The difference in many cases between trash and recyclables is a quick heat-stamp.

Help me out here. The garbage is going to decompose anyhow and release the greenhouse gases. Sweden isn't doing anything to increase the gasses and might actually be reducing it. And this is before you take into account the greenhouse gas savings from not producing electricity from coal or natural gas. So how is what Sweden is doing causing an increase in greenhouse gasses?

The garbage is going to decompose anyhow and release the greenhouse gases. Sweden isn't doing anything to increase the gasses and might actually be reducing it. And this is before you take into account the greenhouse gas savings from not producing electricity from coal or natural gas. So how is what Sweden is doing causing an increase in greenhouse gasses?

For one thing, even 'garbage' may have a significant portion of recyclable, and perhaps even re-useable, material in it, as a result of human error, laziness, lax regulations, etc. (I doubt the jurisdictions that Sweden imports garbage from are anywhere near as good as Sweden itself when it comes to separating waste). Incinerting this stuff, as opposed to recycling it, just means that we use lots more energy to extract more from the earth and refine it next time we need it, rather than recovering the energy

Maybe you're the kind of person who goes around saying: "Oh, if everyone does their part...".

What, like the kind of person who now recycles a lot of waste instead of burning/dumping it? who insulates their home to save wasted energy? who drives a more fuel efficient car because it works just as well at going to the shops or to work as a 5 litre gas guzzler?

The size of the population is the force multiplier. It doesn't matter what percentage you reduce each individual's consumption by, the impact is quickly swamped by the larger and larger number of individuals alive. Population control is by far the most effective and realistic way of have a large impact on resource consumption. Financial incentives to have one or less children is one answer.

That's grim. The only right and moral way of doing population control is by introducing birth control methods and family planning to poor people. What you suggest is effectively a tax on children (or a rebate if you choose not to have children); that's absurd.

You're right on the rest, though. I laugh my ass off the hippies trying to "live green" as if it would make a difference. The behaviour of individuals is irrelevant when the industry down the block is burning fuel and releasing chemicals into the rive

You're right on the rest, though. I laugh my ass off the hippies trying to "live green" as if it would make a difference. The behaviour of individuals is irrelevant when the industry down the block is burning fuel and releasing chemicals into the river; regulate them, not the consumers. I would happily buy "greener" products as long as they were better or at least as good as the dirtier alternatives.

This is known as the "but what difference would it have made if I as an individual had stood up to the Nazis as a German citizen in the 1930s, they were going to kill all the Jews and communists anyway" defence.

Population is a non-problem. Growth is already basically zero (and often negative) in the developed world, and leveling off in the developing world. We've already reached "peak child", to use Hans Rosling's terminology. Due to the trajectory already in place we will reach ~10B population by around 2050, but that's it. We need to figure out how to handle that many people, but no more, and in fact beyond 2050 there's every reason to expect that the population will begin to decline, barring significant improvements in longevity.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html

An excellent book I'd recommend to anyone who is scared of the future is "Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think". This Swedish garbage burning is an example of the healthy trajectory the world is on... no, it's not a perfect solution, but it's a significant improvement, both in greenhouse gases and in waste management, and it will be followed by other significant improvements. We're following an exponential curve of improvements in efficiency and cleanliness while the population growth is leveling off.

Well, at least Sweden has a "Pollutor pays"-inspired law in place, meaning that anyone who sells anything must pay for the costs of taking care of the waste produced throughout the the lifecycle of the product (even from packaging of the product).

I hate that sort of thing. They need either to make everything out of the same material so there is no need to sort or find a way to separate the materials at their end. Requiring customers to wonder if the cap on the soda goes a different place than the cup which may itself go somewhere else than the remaining food waste is just ridiculous. Where does the dirty food wrapper go? Is it food because it has food on it, or is it paper, or is it actually a plastic that looks like thin paper? Is the remaining sod

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the discussion is Oil Drilling. Not trying to troll, but you guys need to get your priorities straight. It was not long ago you guys were pointing out the way forward and the world needs you to do so again.

Generating electricity from trash is pretty inefficient, the US had almost 200 incinerators in 1990 but roughly half of them have been shut down due to economics. The real money for Sweden is the fee for taking trash from European countries that don't have (or won't build) landfills. Still, in the long run it seems make more sense to burn it rather than just bury it even if burning is more expensive in the short term..

Generating electricity from trash is pretty inefficient, the US had almost 200 incinerators in 1990 but roughly half of them have been shut down due to economics. The real money for Sweden is the fee for taking trash from European countries that don't have (or won't build) landfills. Still, in the long run it seems make more sense to burn it rather than just bury it even if burning is more expensive in the short term..

I was living in LA when they had to shut down the main dump because they filled in a valley. That shows how unsustainable our current system is of disposing of waste. Most of the plastics can be converted to various forms of fuel from diesel and fuel oil to a form of gasoline. Most of the rest is burned. So long as you filter the smoke the system works well since high temperatures break down most of the toxic materials. You mostly get carbon and trace amounts of metals. It's how they safely get rid of chemi

The economics were due in part to the air pollution controls and the fact that the older style incinerators we designed to burn everything. You need to sort through stuff carefully.

Also, you might have noticed that the economics of oil and other power sources have changed slightly since the 1990s. Still sometimes a complex decision. We looked at restarting our small municipal incinerator but the start up costs and the limited power generated made industrial composting a better solution. But for a larger

Columbus Ohio had a trash burning power plant but it got shut down in the mid 1980's because of the costs of environmental regulations. I wonder if anything like this could be possible in the US nowadays with the improved emissions processes?

Columbus Ohio had a trash burning power plant but it got shut down in the mid 1980's because of the costs of environmental regulations.

There was one in the St Louis area, too -- my uncle worked there. He smoked four packs of Kools per day through the one lung he hadn't lost to TB and died from COPD at age 60. But I'd wager he might have had another five or ten years had he worked somewhere else.

There is a Monsanto plant in Sauget, across the river from St Louis. Before environmental regs you had to roll the

Is it just me or is this nothing new? As least my dutch garbage has been used to generate electricity for ages, often using the waste heat from that process for heating. And since garbage processing is a commercial business, obviously they're going to want to use their capacity to the maximum. Since laws in Europe require proper garbage disposal, this is has been booming business in many European countries for quite a while and plants in the Netherlands have been processing garbage from several other Europe

Now if they could just stockpile it and figure out a way to re-extract the elements, we could have (yet another) source for "rare earth" metals. The down side is that they're probably in a much lower energy state than when they entered the landfill, but at least all the fluff is gone.

Clearly Sweden is the utility-city that Europe set up with a bunch of incinerators, outbound power lines, and water pumps, then never plays, just buying services from it in nearby cities while it remains in a state of suspended animation.